Bricks and Some of Their Innovations

I like the strange things that happen when we think about count nouns as noncount nouns and vice-versa. One situation where this kind of issue comes to mind is with ground covering technologies. This may seem really strange but I find the continuousness of ground and the singularity of bricks used to sometimes cover it a oxymoron of sorts

In some parts of the world bricks are often not just rectangular prisms that sit next to one another. People have added some technology to integrate them and give them some influence on each other. In particular, in Korea, one often finds bricks that have a jagged profile that fits into the bricks around it. This is rather advantageous because the bricks are then much more likely to hold together, so much so that they often ley them without mortar, and as a result, they are reusable, which to my surprise I have seen first person on a few construction sites here.

A further innovation in the design of ground covering bricks is the integration of some holes to let soil through and, eventually, let grass grow. This is not uncommon in most places where bricks are used in gardens but here in Korea I have seen an augmentation of this technology so that the areas of dirt from one brick connect to those on another with a shallow section. The advantage of this system is that grass now grows to hold the bricks together and creates a more adaptive combined surface. I think this is quite brilliant because not only does it support a sustainable use of effective ground cover but it means that parking lots and other places where this method is used end up being about 40% green (made of grass) which is a significant further benefit to the environment. Personally, I think we should not have many flat surfaces in modern construction that do not have some kind of plant sustaining features but that is another thing to talk about. 

The images are just a few of the varieties of interesting ground coverings I have seen in Korea. And of course, there are many in other places it is just that here is where I have started thinking more about this issue. 

There is potential for many more ideas here. What do you think about this? 

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How would you improve Wikipedia?

I was thinking about this one day, because I think it is important to think how we can improve things we like and use a lot, and I thought of a few possibilities:

1. Quality assurance factors with suggestions for reliable research - This could be a bit like a widget that shows Google Scholar results based on some aspect of the current page.
2. Better citing tools - These might be simply citation suggestions based on related search results.
3. Ways to inspire people to correct more articles and write new articles, especially people who have valuable knowledge. 
4. Expert days or other short periods where many experts are asked to write in wikipedia. A bit like talk like a pirate day or earth day, but instead just make wikipedia much better day. 
5. History Colouring - It looks like they should be doing this now but seems they are not. If good data was collected on this method we could also create some kind of quality assurance based on the same methodology.
6. Fewer advertisements from Jimmy Wales heart. I know they need money I just hate the way they ask for it. Partially because of an interesting situation highlighted by Aaron Swartz in his widely read article "Who Writes Wikipedia?"

What do you think? 

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What we really want to carry and compute with...

The future of mobile computing is a total hot topic at the moment and this video of a moleskin laptop brings up a recurring aspect of the issue. 

As far as I understand we can make small computers quite well and we are still getting better at it. For several years companies have made small computers of notable speed and with reasonable battery life. However, for the most part, companies are not doing this. I think, as a consumer, I feel as though companies are purposefully neglecting to make what I want. Instead they are making many other things which, seemingly fewer people want. 

The iPad, despite its lack of camera etc., reminds me of a device people want, in the same way many people want a moleskine notebook, and possibly, in the same way we would want a moleskin notebook PC. 

Moleskine recently released a tool to help people make print outs to go into their notebooks. I think this is a nice idea though very wasteful of paper, as you will be discarding offcuts, and it seems relatively inconvenient. I think they would benefit from providing special printer paper with round corner stickers that fit in the notebooks, but they may also do well to look at the opportunities of a digital moleskine style experience; perhaps an iPhone app, or a whole new approach to portable computing. 

What do you think? 

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Great Design from Non Designers

What's the right approach to new products? Pick three key attributes or features, get those things very, very right, and then forget about everything else. Those three attributes define the fundamental essence and value of the product -- the rest is noise. For example, the original iPod was: 1) small enough to fit in your pocket, 2) had enough storage to hold many hours of music and 3) easy to sync with your Mac (most hardware companies can't make software, so I bet the others got this wrong). That's it -- no wireless, no ability to edit playlists on the device, no support for Ogg -- nothing but the essentials, well executed.

via paulbuchheit.blogspot.com

I have written before about creating a design school or curriculum around the principals of a company like Google. In this provoking post Paul Buchheit (one of the people who did Gmail and later Friendfeed) talks about a perspective on design that I agree with very strongly, and that I think many other people have failed to clearly represent.

Additionally I think it is rather interesting that many non designers have very valuable perspectives on design, not just as solutions but really as methods and models for the creative process. I wonder how much we can really learn?

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A door into the mind

I am very interested by the idea of a language of the mind as has been discussed by many authors including the well known Steven Pinker in The Stuff of Thought and The Language Instinct. In any case, so far as I have read there is not a good way to bridge interface of human language and an underlying mental one, so called mentalese. 

There seem to be a number of non verbal systems for surpassing common animal interfaces. One interesting example is in certain ant colonies, pheromones are used by wasps to essentially mind control the colony during some invasive procedure. In humans hormons can have similar effects although they tend to be much more subtle. (It is also often said that the sense of smell has the most significant influence on the brain because of its proximity and direct connection, as can be seen when sniffing a strong acid). In a recent TED conference however, Vilayanur Ramachandran discussed how nurons can be effected directly by the eyes in a strange kind of empathic consciousness. 

Anyway, I am interested in this idea of having some kind of interface into and out of the mind for a few reasons.

1. For design and psychology research being able to measure emotions more accurately by using digital smell sensors which give some idea of the endocrinological condition of a subject. 
2. For high speed learning, to learn logic structures faster without the barrier of language.
3. For computational knowledge systems, something which is still largely nonexistent. Even Google's data scheme is not generally based on knowledge but just a coincidence of the way knowledge needs to exist. 
4. To create a kind of mental API

What do you think? 

The image is obviously from the matrix.

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BLOOM- Ruth Whiting and Tim Elverston's art show

My sister is putting on an exhibition with her boyfriend in Gainesville Florida. It should be pretty interesting so pleas check it out if you have a chance.

Bloom

Handmade Seeds in a Technological Age.

Bloom is a show about passion. It's a show about a choice to make our own reality. It's a study in the density of hand-made technology and the miracle of cumulative intuition. No matter what we ask of our materials, they always have an answer.  This work is about learning to listen—as indeed, appreciation of subtlety is often a matter of survival.

Ruth Whiting and Tim Elverston foster a handmade future in a world where products arrive in sealed packages and advertising tells us how to dream. Bloom is a glimpse into a reality that is painstakingly fashioned from the raw fruits of our technological age. Tim Elverston is a designer and kinetic sculptor who makes kites, lamps, mobiles, and clothing. All his work is tuned with exquisite function from the most appropriate materials. Ruth Whiting paints sumptuous and imagined worlds where electric cables come to life within a thriving ecology of their own.

Opening February 26th during art walk at Randy Batista Gallery in downtown Gainesville next  to the Hippodrome.

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Virtual Reality and Real Virtuality

Recently I have realised that many ideas in design: new design models, processes and theories of design, are in some way related to a transformation of ideas from computer science or related digital logic into the real world. Examples for this are the concept of Object Oriented Design in product design which is something I have been considering for a few years now but also, as a less dependent example, the prospect of an API for a non digital object seems quite interesting. In any case, I think computer science is built on very rich developments on logical systems which I think many other disciplines can learn from in some situations. I hope this happens often, and in more ways than simply the current interest in openness such as open-source hardware (and more from Make and Wired) in which open-source notions are physically represented. 

In any case, I thought an important step here would be to devise a term to describe this trend. One that I thought may be appropriate in some contexts is Real Virtuality, but that is more like tangible computing or meeting online friends offline. I would be interested to hear any other suggestions. 

The image is an Arduino board which is a notable example of open-source hardware. 

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